U.S. forces rebuild ragged local police

QAYYARAH, Iraq - U.S. forces in the area around the northern city of Mosul are rebuilding the local police in the wake of a complete collapse of native forces last year.

“It all happened in two weeks,” said Lt. Col. Bradley Becker.

Col. Becker commands the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Field Artillery Regiment, part of the 25th Infantry Division from Fort Lewis in Washington state.

Since October, the 2nd Battalion has patrolled the dusty approaches to Mosul, an area known to U.S. soldiers as Q-West after its most important town, Qayyarah.

Qayyarah, which is located along the Tigris River and the main Baghdad-Mosul highway, controls approaches to Mosul from the south. Police in Qayyarah are critical to keeping insurgents from reaching Mosul, an impoverished and ethnically divided city.

In the wake of a battle for Fallujah in November, Q-West, which had been relatively peaceful, “fell apart,” said Maj. Kevin Murphy, Col. Becker’s operations officer.

The Fallujah fight left hundreds of insurgents dead. Many of the survivors fled north to Mosul, which since has seen elevated levels of violence.